Walking in Your Teen's Sneakers

My wife and I attended our daughter's high school open house last night. Perhaps you know the routine. After a PTA meeting in the gym, we found our daughter's homeroom, picked up her schedule, then walked through the classrooms where she spends her typical day. Along with other middle-aged parents, we looked out of place as we squeezed our wider-than-they-used-to-be bodies into smaller-than-we-remembered desks. In abbreviated eight-minute class periods, we met each teacher and learned a bit about our daughter's classes: Spanish, Algebra II, Chemistry, and other subjects.

Some things about high school have hardly changed since I graduated in 1972. The tiled hallways are still noisy and crowded, filled with the aroma of sneakers and wax and a strangely familiar combination of other odors that smell like . . . well, like school. The black metal minute hands on the wall clocks still tick with infuriating slowness till it's time for the bell to ring. Some teachers seem knowledgeable and caring, while others appear burned out and bored.

I wondered as I wandered through the locker-lined halls, "What do I really know about today's youth culture?" I'm no expert, but Proverbs 5 tells me some facts I still know for sure about today's kids.

They still need principles to guide them. "My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart, for they will prolong your life many years and bring you prosperity" (vv. 1, 2). Like a guardrail by the edge of a cliff, God's truth provides a secure boundary. "How can a young man keep his way pure?" The answer hasn't changed: "By living according to your word" (Psalm 119:9).

Today's youth still need parents to love them. "Let love and faithfulness never leave you; . . . write them on the tablet of your heart" (v. 3). Where will children learn love and faithfulness, if not from their parents? In The American Enterprise (January/February 1998), Karl Zinsmeister bluntly writes, "Whatever else is said about Generation X, one fact is clear: They are the most badly parented cohort of Americans ever. Gen Xers are a generation that has experienced mass divorce, widespread childbearing out of wedlock, institutional day care, and myriad misguided educational fads. They grew up with contraceptives, drugs, weapons, and ‘feelings' in their schools, not prayers and facts. . . . Worst of all, many of their parents were too self-absorbed and busy chasing their own rainbows to be properly attentive mothers and fathers."

Yes, times have changed, but young children still need moms and dads to read to them, hug them, pray for them, listen to them, play with them, discipline them, set a good example for them, and "bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4).

They still need promises to encourage them. One of the worst things any generation can do is to crush the next generation's sense of hope. Instead, our children need reassurance that when they hold onto the Lord's love and faithfulness, they "will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man" (v. 4).

Most of all, young people still need a Partner to walk with them. Parents can't be there all the time, but God can. No matter what our culture is like 20 years from now, God will still be the same, and his promises will still be true. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart . . . and he will make your paths straight" (vv. 5, 6)—even in hallways that smell like school.